


Tightrope

by Ler



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 00:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18021245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ler/pseuds/Ler
Summary: In which Walter Strickler makes a choice because he is angry, and then makes another one, because he is the exact opposite, which is a very human things to do.Except he is not exactly human. But he is someone who is able to change.So third one is made for him.





	Tightrope

 

_There's a reason not to want this,_

_But I forgot._

 

 

Changelings, in general, walk a very fine line between hubris and pride.

Pride is looking up into the eyes of the oppressor, a mountainous murderous creature of immense strength that slayed your brothers and sisters without a thought, and demand respect because you deserved it. Looking with the same sentiment down into the eyes of a child, capable, idealistic child that has done miraculous things while you only seemed to do less than… worthy ones in return?

Well, that is hubris. Maybe even with a hint of hypocrisy.

But then again, changelings walk a fine line between a number of things. Anger, for one, could be honed into a weapon, a screaming blade of sharp wrath that cuts from the place where one’s soul had to be, but, it could also can be a biggest misstep, the great downfall of a careful and calculating mind. It takes a lifetime to use with care and deliberation, and for all his misgivings (few), Walter thought he reached this level of self-control required to do so.

Except for as of late.

Honestly, Atlas is the one to blame. Not solemly, but he definitely is.

 

 

Anger Roth’s eyes shine deeply from the darkness of the car, their light unchanging even as the fine mockery of his voice is in the way reminiscent of the sweet whisper the the bottom of the gramophone.

«Do you know how to use it?»

The two figurines in Walter’s hand, each the size of walnut, weight more than two pieces of living stone Strickler would expect to weight. They are, in their basic nature, rock, and a thought crosses his mind that there is no way one can put something like this is a person’s cup inconspicuously, except it is followed, not surprisingly, with a vision, the wandering glimmer in Barbara’s eyes, full of such wonder of the world and stories and life she takes in, openly and honestly.

Well, she might not. Cups slip between her fingers, and pies burn in an inferno, and laughs spills out at the jokes that were not even that funny to begin with, yet she laughs anyway. Sometimes Barbara doesn’t notice the most obvious of things -

_a trollhunting son, an otherworldly creature in the basement, a fight in the living room, a changeling invader in her love life_

-so what’s a rock in a cup of tea?

Nothing, really. Won’t change a thing. She won’t even notice.

 

Well, maybe it will change some things, he finally admits. She will become a part of the third rule.

It is not a… pleasant thought.

That is the change.

 

She talks, tiredly, melodically, about JIm and her aggravated concern, and it’s something he is used to, something he knows - they talked about Atlas before, on multiple occasions, and on these multiple occasions he could have just told her, he could have just let it slip that maybe she should look a little bit closer, be a little bit more carefully, that the boy is not a just her boy, but that would have been a part of a very big secret, a secret that was not his to tell, or maybe it was, you have to know what secrets to keep and what secrets to tell and to whom, yet she is so very easy to talk to - but the stones in his hands weight a lot more than they should. His words seem almost rehearsed, and almost to himself, yet she is grateful, always so grateful for his ear and his thoughts, and him-

 

Barbara’s hands take his.

A lock of hair falls from her fringe over her forehead and crookedly sitting glasses.

She smiles at him-

-because Barbara always gives: time, care, laughter, space, attention, opinion, herself, unabridged, and asks for so little in return, like a moment when her phone rings -

-so when her fingers slip away, his demand to follow.

 

Walter asks himself, for the first time for a hundredth time why the hell that is.

And then, he finds the word he was not looking for.

 

The stones clank on the bottom of his pocket.

 

The late afternoon finds them on the sofa of the Lake household, engaged in a conversation. It’s about vaccination, and the TV softly chines in the background with some film none of them are really interested in watching anyway. The coffee in his cup tastes worse than sock coffee, and that says something about Barbara’s miraculous ability to break the mould in every way he expects her not to, how can you demolish a cup of coffee from the machine, you unbelievable woman-

-and in the middle of his purely hypothetical speech on mandatory vaccinations (not that she knows he has seen what polio can do) possibly the least romantic speech one can have, Barbara kisses him.

Her lips press against the corner of his mouth, when he looks away, amused as his own line of thought, and that very thought stops half-way in becoming a sentence. He turns his head mouth still open, mind now full of completely different thoughts, or no thoughts at all, except for that one word now booming, louder that the babbling of the TV.

 

Changelings live on a tightrope, life but a balancing act between two things, because their lives are made of juxtaposition in which they themselves are but a walking paradox, which can be summed up, on it’s most basic of levels to one core interior conflict of what one has to do versus what one wants to.

And some, like Otto, convince themselves that one and the other is the same.

And some, like Nomura, believe that one is the expression of the other.

 

And Walter

Walter lived long enough to know that one conundrum of self-identification is just enough and he doesn’t need more. So instead, for a change, he just chooses.

Walter Strickler falls off the tightrope (or maybe he was off that tightrope long before the Word kicked the earth from under his feet), and kisses Barbara in return.

It’s a long fall, so he kisses her a hundred times more. 

 

His jacket ends down on the floor and stays there, stones still hidden inside. Walter doesn’t want to think about how this could have gone differently, and this could have felt, how the bond would have poured though their bodies and make them one in golden sensation of ghostly unity.

Barbara’s hair streams in flows of magma of the couch cushion, her short nails digging into the collar of his turtleneck, and her lips are hungry with fire and magic.

You can’t improve perfection, really.

 

Walter remembers about the stones again when there is a glowing sword resting against his face, and oh, yes, there was a reason why he had them in the first place.

Across the walkway, inside a brightly lit room, Barbara collects the cups of the coffee table.

And Atlas, in his anger, a treacherous thing, forgets that Walter is a world-class liar.

The tip of his finger glides along the edge, just enough for a small cut, simple very well timed.

The cup breaks and Barbara comes back into view, sucking on her index finder.

 

This doesn’t change a thing, except this changes everything.

 

Even the smartest of people make stupid decisions, even Walter himself did some extremely silly unthought of things in his life (once or twice, at least that Otto knows about), and the boy has nothing on him in terms of age and experience.

So the child does the next stupidest thing he can think of.

(Walter might have jousted him. Possibly a bit too much. Possibly, rather stupidly as well. He had… other things on his mind.)

 

Otto’s car speeds down the road and disappears around the corner.

Changelings walk a thin line between loyalty and betrayal. Nothing changes there. He just never though that this fine footwork would be about him.

It’s hard to admit that a child could be his only hope for getting out of this mess, but then again, Walter put himself in this situation justly on his own. The very same child still thinks that his mother’s life is dependent on keeping Walter intact. The later doesn’t rash to dessuade him.

 

«Mom!» scrams the boy when everything goes to hell, because that’s what happens when you cross the line. Walter forgot about that part for some reason, but that again, he did have other things on his mind.

[In a way, his fall of the tightrope has become akin to flying. So far, it’s the only thing that didn’t feel like a complete disaster.]

But the cut runs over the side of his neck and the boy shifts to his mother’s side.

«Jim, I’m fine! Walt, he-»

The pain is searing, otherwise Strickler would have actually laughed at the bafflement Altas radiated.

«You lied!» is all the boy manages to say as they make their way to Barbara’s car.

Walter wants to chuckle, but all that comes out is a grunt. The shift make the injury more painful, somehow. «You… are surprised?»

«You lied!» Walter’s arm thrown over his shoulder, the boy’s face crunches. «Why… That’s just… I believed you!»

«Then it was a good lie, Atlas. Integral, I might say, to you not killing me.»

Barbara, still as confused as she was 30 minutes ago, helps to get him into the passenger seat. «Where are we going exactly?»

The driver’s door opens, or so he thinks, everything becomes the nasty kind of hazy. Cold fingers touch his neck, and for a moment he is almost relieved.

«I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the hospital might not be an option for this. It’s… glowing.»

«We are going to the Trollmarket. We need the centre-bound part of the eastern bridge. Just… drive please?» The boy dumps himself behind and immediately pokes his head over Walter’s shoulder as the car jerks into motion. The battle rages inside the house. «Dude, but the bond thing-»

 

The tightrope is a perilous thing. It forces you, when you fall off it, to stick to it, because you might not have a choice.

«Do you think I would really do that to the woman I love?»

 

The car swerves on the road, lightly, and stays eerily silent, at least until the boy coughs loudly into his ear.

«… Alright, we don’t have time to unpack that right now. Or ever. Okay, Mom, now you have to drive into the canal.»

«I’m sorry, what?!»

And then a knife pierces the hood of the car, and Walter is half-way through loosing consciousness, especially when he shoves his leg pass the gear box and into the gas pedal.

 

There was a possibility of Walter ending up in a cage the moment they got into Trollmarket, yet he is still somehow surprised. Maybe because he overestimated the weight the boy has on Vendel, or maybe because somehow he thought that NotEnriques’s causal presence there has somehow warmed the populace to changelings as people. In any case, when Walter wakes up, he has an impression of a cold metal bar on his face. His neck ached with a sharp throb and he jerks himself up, using the crossing bars of the cage as leverage.

He comes face to face with Barbara. She sits on a cushion, shoulder leaning against the outer side of the cage.

«How are you feeling?»

«Like a Troll assassin stabbed me in the neck. You?»

«I’m fine,» she leans her head to the side, and examines the state of his neck with a frown. «As fine as one can be finding out there are trolls, or that my son fights trolls, or that I had a troll boyfriend who kept trying to kill my son. On a second thought, fine is not a good word to describe it. Furious? Yes, I’m furious.»

«That’s understandable.»

Walter closes his eyes. His fall of a tightrope ends in a magnificent crash.

_Had_.

«One thing I personally can’t understand, is why Jim is not mad at you? We talked about this for hours while you were out, and he seemed to be more concerned that Vendel was refusing to treat you than anything else.»

«Well, maybe there is something that can change the old goat’s mind,» he lifts his lead-like hand, almost like his arm is broken, maybe it is broken - and pulls three stones from his breast pocket.

Two are shaped like people. One is furiously bright blue.

«I have no idea what all of this means,» Barbara’s fingers pick up the Eye of Gunmar, or rather goes to pick up the eye, but instead gently cradle his palm. «But I know what this does. It’s swelling up. You might have a fracture.»

Her fingers are cold. They are always cold. For some reason he finds it amusing.

«Of two things happening to me, a broken arm is not going to be the one to kill me.» He even tries to mimic with his hand, but it only manages to rise up to his chest before his vision bursts in white from the intense pain that causes. «Doesn’t make it better though.»

«Did you just say,» Barbara’s face pokes through the bars, so far that she has to go to her knees. «That you are… dying?»

«That is what usually happens when an ancient assassin, the chaos incarnate, stabs you, dear. I would know, I’m an…»

Barbara’s hand lands on his forehead. It’s so pleasantly cool, he almost moans.

«…ancient assassin myself.»

«You are burning up,» she mutters. «This is ridiculous. Suffering is one thing - honey crackers, I can’t believe I just said that - but dying? Who do they think they are!»

«Trolls. And I am a changeling.»

«Honestly, right now, it’s a same thing to me. Jim is off somewhere doing who knows what, you are dying and I’m here doing nothing!»

She spots the Eye again, and picks it up off his palm.

«What is this?»

«The eye of Gunmar.»

«The Eye of Gum- Doesn’t matter. They want it?»

«Your son certainly will.»

«Great!» She stands up, stretching. Her hand flies up to fix her glasses, and the look in her eyes reminds him again why he let the Word slip back there in the car. «I’ll be right back.»

«Where are you going?»

«I’m still mad about the whole «killing each other» thing you and Jim have been up to. Doesn’t mean you will die on my watch. Also, don’t do it while I’m arguing with centuries-old creatures for your life.»

She pauses, her back straight and her shoulders tense. «Please.»

«I’ll make my best effort, dear.»

 

 

A life of changeling is a constant dance on the edge of a knife between two things. Sometimes it’s life and death, sometimes it’s having faith and taking matters into your own hands, sometimes it’s trust, just trust, a thin swinging line over the abyss of solitude loneliness.

Everyone sees the rope-walker, a solitary acrobat above the crowd.

Nobody knows how many times the acrobat has fallen, and from what height, before he could walk like that. Nobody knows what waits for him on the other end of that line.

Walter Strickler will pick himself up and walk the tightrope again. Unless he dies. He probably won’t. When Barbara decided on something, she will do her best to get there. Especially when she is mad.

And he did promise her. He intended to keep that promise.

 

That was a change.

 

 

 

P.S.

 

«You… are a really good teacher.» She finally says, after everything, after spending hours supervising Vendel work and getting Walter’s arm together, but specifically after watching him teach Jim how to cut Angor’s eye so it would fit into the Amulet.

«This is perhaps one good thing I’m good at,» he replies, and fixes his sling.

«What now.» And that is not a question, because when a question becomes so big and so encompassing, it stops being one.

«Now I’m going to leave.»

Walter is not looking at her, but he knows her whole body tenses. Her gulp is too loud.

«Where?»

«Somewhere safe. Trollmarket is not a place for me, never was. Janus Order left me to die. And…»

He wants to touch her hand, cold fingers, slender palm, but it feels… intruding on his part.

«…I suspect, I’m not particularly welcome in your house anymore.»

He has to say it now, he does. Out loud.

«Barbara. This has been a very long war. It’s older than me, bigger than me. I never wished for Atlas to be a part of it, or for us to end up on different sides. It’s a little bit more complicated now, as if it could, but my ambition managed to do it-»

«Yet Jim trusts you.» He voice sounds dry, and slightly choked.

«He is a person of… infectious convictions. And I am just one man. Changelling-Man.»

«What does that even mean?» she chuckles, and her head shaking. She finally looks at him. Her eyes are wide, and slightly misty.

He should not have allowed their eyes to meet.

«I should have never come into your life,» he says. «I knew it would only end up badly, but I selfishly persisted, and I am sorry. Selfishness makes us, people like me. You made everything better. And I wantedthat _better_ so very much.»

Barbara bites her lip.

Her head turns back. A lock of hair fall over her face.

So that’s that. One last thing perhaps, before he goes.

«I’m truly sorry,» he looks at the Heartstone as well. It glows, in a way, like a setting sun. «For never being a man you deserved.»

And now, he makes his leave.

«Someone needs to explain to me, _extensively_ , what the hell is going on.»

«Barbara?»

«Like that Amulet, did Merlin, The Merlin really make it? What the heck are changelings? Are they trolls? Not trolls? What is this war? How long has it been going on? Why does this Gummar-»

«-Gunmar.»

«Whatever his name is, why does he hate everyone? And what do you have to do with it? Also, you know that Claire does magic? When did this happen? Toby, sweet round Toby from the house across has a huge flying hammer, does his grandmother know? Do any of our kid’s parents know what is happening? It’s a war and people die in wars, Walter. What if something happens to them? Will we ever find out?»

«Barbara.»

«Walter.»

Her whole body twists, silently, towards him.

Barbara’s eyes are blue and full of tempests. Her hand fists into his jacket.

«If you think about going anywhere before explaining all of this to me, before at least making an attempt to make this right-»

«That will be a…» It is always so easy to talk to her. Except what is isn’t. «Very long tale. Centuries. Millenia, even. As your son says, that’s a lot to unpack.»

«Then I’m postponing your guilt trip indefinitely. How long would it take to tell a story that takes millennia?»

«A whole life probably.» She lets go. He wants to, urgently, to wrap his arms around her.

«Good. Then first you start by helping my son to save this place, while I go and do some work I get payed for so that there is at least a chance for me to fix my car. And then you come to me, and start from the very beginning. Maybe,» and she smirks and something in it from Barbara who found him funny and charming, Barbara who kissed him on a couch one quiet evening. «We can find out if that mythical man I deserve is somewhere in there.»

The binding stones are heavy and warm in the pocket of his coat.

«As you wish,» and adds almost too soft to be heard. «My dear.»

 


End file.
